You can reupload your ebook again and again. But you have to do it a first time.

The beauty of the digital book in the digital marketplace is that you can edit later and upload your changes. Yay! But don’t forget that you have to upload that first one.

If you create a printed book and suddenly have 10,000 copies, congratulations! But if there is 1 mistake, you now have 10,000 mistakes. Sorry about that. With digital, you have 1 copy and 1 mistake to fix. But there’s that first one that is hard–diamond hard.

This post is partly out of frustration of getting my books into non-Amazon stores. There are a zillion guidelines, a million options and lots of places along the way to throw in the towel.*

I am fully aware that I just need to get this first version up there, but I’m having first-timer jitters. I think because, finally, I’m taking it seriously. Finally, I care. I want it to be good, no, I want it to be great. So I’m hesitant to submit in case it isn’t great. But maybe I should read the title of this post: I need to submit good and then later edit to great.

I’m pretty certain we can go from nothing to greatness. I think there are a few (gazillion?) steps in between. But there’s at least one step: the first.

“If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better.”
― Lindsay Buckingham

I have 1,200+ posts under my belt. I’m in “writing shape.” Yet … every single day is still the first day of the rest of my life. Every day is fresh, new and exciting–or terrifying. Actually, they are no longer terrifying. The “fear” isn’t fear of jumping out of an airplane, it’s jumping and knowing that one of two things will happen:

A soft landing.

I’ll learn how to fly.

Nothing is going to happen if we don’t take the leap. Well, yes, something will happen, it’s just that it’s called nothing.

There’s the towel. Are you going to throw it in?

* The “towel” has been surgically attached to my hip, so there is no throwing in the towel. It’s just an expression people use when they quit–or so I’ve heard.